Page 5 | Teen about to be kicked out of sixth form - what would you do?

plumsageplum · 18/11/2021 20:16

You are talking a load of bollocks @Mojoj. Getting someone out of bed is not mollycoddling or being a helicopter parent. I’m glad you weren’t my mother

And I'm glad you weren't mine. Trying to get me out of bed at 18? If I fail, I fail, if I get a deadend job, so be it, it's my life. Just because it's not the life you want for your child . If I refuse to get a job, kick me out. But you can't force these things.

Mojoj · 18/11/2021 20:22

@RampantIvy and why don't they become adults at 18, I wonder...? Maybe because their overprotective mammies are still hauling them out of bed in the morning

Bluntness100 · 18/11/2021 20:25

God this desire to diagnose him, is it adhd,is he depressed. You know what,sometimes people are just not very clever and they are lazy, that’s it, they ain’t smart they ain’t motivated and they are lazy, they don’t have a disorder, illness or condition, it’s just they aren’t very smart and they don’t really give a shit, we have all met them, let’s be honest.

Bluntness100 · 18/11/2021 20:26

[quote Mojoj]@RampantIvy and why don't they become adults at 18, I wonder...? Maybe because their overprotective mammies are still hauling them out of bed in the morning[/quote]
Well that’s not the case for this lad is it, his parents aren’t hauling him out of bed they are sitting watching him fail.

plumsageplum · 18/11/2021 20:38

Life's pretty shitty. None of these kids asked to be born but they just have to go to school, college, work until they get too ill or old to work anymore, and have limited time at the end of their life to actually relax. Just because their parents wanted kids and because society demands participation. Sometimes I think the desire to have children is inherently selfish.

I see people saying at college they should have part-time jobs, and between the chores and the college work and the studying and the part time jobs and the seeing friends and family... When do they get time to just... Do nothing if they want to?

Maybe he needs some time. Make him get a job. If he is happy working in Tesco, so what? Why does everyone need to get amazing A-Levels and go to Uni? If he doesn't get up for his work either, kick him out. Or maybe a BTEC would be better?

One day, he will either realise he wants to do things, or he will continue how he is, and that's his choice and he has every right to not get good A-Levels or to have a low-paid job. He knows the consequences. It's not up to you to dictate his path in life at this point.

RampantIvy · 18/11/2021 20:38

Trying to get me out of bed at 18? If I fail, I fail, if I get a deadend job, so be it, it's my life. Just because it's not the life you want for your child

You are so very, very, very wrong. My daughter wanted me to wake her up becasue she didn't want to fail. She suffers from CFS, and needed an extra nudge in the morning. Unlike school, university doesn't start at 8.20 am every morning, so she manages to get up and get to lectures on time.

and why don't they become adults at 18, I wonder...? Maybe because their overprotective mammies are still hauling them out of bed in the morning

Or because teenagers, like all children, mature at different rates. Some magically become mature and responsible adults at one minute past midnight on their 18th birthday, and some mature at 19 or 20. Children and teenagers, like people, are all different. Waking an 18 year old up in the morning up is not being overprotective IMO.

And for the record, DD was mature enough to realise that A levels mattered to her at well under 18. She turned 18 after her A levels. DD was a mature and responsible adult at 18, but unlike you @Mojoj I appreciate that not all 18 year olds are the same as she was at 18.

Well that’s not the case for this lad is it, his parents aren’t hauling him out of bed they are sitting watching him fail.

Exactly @Bluntness100

lnsufficientFuns · 18/11/2021 20:44

Complete bullshit that you don’t even try to help him get up, seriously that’s crazy

Every one of us in our family would have failed a levels of our parents had left us to it like that

plumsageplum · 18/11/2021 20:45

You are so very, very, very wrong. My daughter wanted me to wake her up becasue she didn't want to fail

That's obviously completely different to a son who doesn't want to get up

DontKeepTheFaith · 18/11/2021 20:48

I would just get him up! If he will go once up, it’s a no brainer, surely🤷‍♀️

We helicopter parented DS1 and he is now surviving at university, managing to get himself up and feeding himself. Never managed it once during sixth form but we picked our battles. Ds1 is an awesome kid who just couldn’t get himself up. He worked his socks off, is super bright and has ended up in a top university so getting him up was a small thing really.

I would not be able to sit back and watch my child fail without knowing I have done everything. At 18 they don’t really see the consequences.

mumof1or2 · 18/11/2021 20:51

@PlanDeRaccordement

What are his grades? Because those matter more than attendance. If he’s getting As across the board, I’d fight the sixth form on the attendance rule. The whole reason they fixated on attendance is the myth that lack of attendance = fails exams. This isn’t true for really bright kids for whom sitting in a classroom is boring beyond belief because they’ve learned the material already.

This isn't strictly true. I teach in a sixth form and to get funding for a student they have to be full time. If attendance falls below a certain level the school won't get funding for them and therefore aren't allowed to keep them on roll. Grades are irrelevant to this.

urbanbuddha · 18/11/2021 20:58

He may technically be an adult but he clearly still needs help from you. I don’t understand this business of tough love, he must just look after himself. He is your child and if you don’t look out for him, no one will.

Help him to wake up in the morning and get to school on time. It is not that onerous

Yep.
Because none of your lives are going to be better if he drops out of sixth form.

HollowTalk · 18/11/2021 21:00

It's making me laugh that everyone is suggesting that the poster wakes up her son as though this might never have occurred to her. I'm sure she's done everything she can to get him out of bed.

And for those suggesting a bucket of water over him, are you really suggesting that his pillow and quilt are drenched every day?

Bluntness100 · 18/11/2021 21:06

Maybe he needs some time. Make him get a job. If he is happy working in Tesco, so what? Why does everyone need to get amazing A-Levels and go to Uni? If he doesn't get up for his work either, kick him out. Or maybe a BTEC would be better?

Becayse we want our children to have choices, it’s fine to work at Tesco for the rest of your life if that’s what makes you happy. It’s very different if you’ve no choice, so we get them through education to enable them to make that choice.

Bluntness100 · 18/11/2021 21:07

Op, do you and your husband work? In y house my daughter would have been woken by us getting up and ready for work, if she wasn’t awake one of us would shout get up little blunt. And she’d do the same back,,mum, you’re going to be late for work,

So are you all laying in bed? Is that the issue?

plumsageplum · 18/11/2021 21:09

So are you all laying in bed? Is that the issue?

I don't know why you assuming other people in the house being awake would prevent someone else from being asleep. Also just because someone shouts up and you reply, doesn't mean you can't then go back to sleep. Maybe I just find sleep super easy, but someone could be doing a spring clean in my bedroom and I could still sleep.

Bluntness100 · 18/11/2021 21:14

@plumsageplum

So are you all laying in bed? Is that the issue?

I don't know why you assuming other people in the house being awake would prevent someone else from being asleep. Also just because someone shouts up and you reply, doesn't mean you can't then go back to sleep. Maybe I just find sleep super easy, but someone could be doing a spring clean in my bedroom and I could still sleep.

I am a light sleeper, as is my family, and if I walked into my daughters room and shouted time to get up or vice versa it would wake us up. Get it’s different for you.

ZenNudist · 18/11/2021 21:21

Seriously just wake him up. I'm all for not spoon feeding but it's like you want him to get kicked out. What is stopping you? Are you out when he gets in? Call him and make sure he is up. Is he completely self sufficient in all other ways? Pays his own phone contract, works to earn his going out money, cooks his own meals and meals for the family, food shops, does laundry, cleans?

If you've got him to the point he's completely independent then this still isn't the hill to die on. If he isn't independent why are you insisting on independence on getting himself up?

If he's staying up too late is that gaming? Turn off the WiFi stop paying for his data and make it a whole house rile that phones are left downstairs by 11.

Start parenting. You're nearly there.

plumsageplum · 18/11/2021 21:22

I am a light sleeper, as is my family, and if I walked into my daughters room and shouted time to get up or vice versa it would wake us up. Get it’s different for you.

I seem to come from a family of deep-sleepers tbh. My brother used to sleep though his phone alarms, even when they'd wake me up . Alarms wake me up, but I could easily fall back asleep after, and people busying around isn't something that would wake me. My grandfather though... Up in a heartbeat over any little noise. He used to tease me a lot, would say "plum, a tornado could be ravaging the town and we could be being evacuated and you'd still be in bed" reminiscing now

Original poster

iammumm · 18/11/2021 21:49

Wow, what a smorgasbord of responses. Thanks for taking the time to give your two cents, everyone.

To those who've taken their time to write thoughtful, balanced responses without jumping to any conclusions or assuming things that haven't been stated, I truly appreciate it.

To those who have mentioned that perhaps we've already tried (and tried and tried and tried) the wacky idea of waking him up - thank you, your common sense is uncanny.

A lot of the responses have made me think deeply (which is what I was hoping for), and it's all good conversations to have with my DH and DS – how he feels we can help (but also become more responsible), why he thinks it's happening, etc.

But some of the responses are very presumptuous...

Someone said it was complete bullshit and "crazy" that I don't help him get up. Some have wrongfully presumed I all-of-a-sudden have cut off helping him the minute he turned 18. Others have said if I'm not literally hauling his body out of bed that I'm watching him fail. Other gems: I need to get more involved, I need to put the work in, and my personal fav: "Because of feckless laziness and irresponsibility your son is about to leave school without completing the syllabus so no qualifications. All thanks to his parents. You must be very proud."

I also love, "So are you all laying in bed? Is that the issue?" 😂

There have been times when he's woken up after I'd pestered him every 5 minutes until he finally stood up, I watched him go into the bathroom, he got dressed, packed his bag, and then when I see he hasn't left the house on time, go into his room and he's asleep again. Is it wrong of me to think this is 100%, no excuses, completely unacceptable behaviour and that he needs to deal with the consequences of his actions, rather than me mollycoddle him all the way to the door of his classroom at 18 years old with a beard n' shit?

Also, as some have kindly mentioned, parents have to work and have other children (and in our case, a smallholding on top of work/kids to take care of), so no, we're not having a lay in. I can't spend my entire morning making sure he's not crawling back into bed – we have 18 mouths to feed and need to go to work. C'est la vie.

I can't count the number of heart-to-hearts we've had about it over the years. I can't count how many conversations I've had with his school. The bottom line is, he doesn't enjoy school and he is a lazy MF (it's quite simple really, he's comfy in bed and it's much more fun than going to classes he doesn't enjoy) - the combo of the two make him obviously not care enough to sort it out, so perhaps it's going to be about finding something he does care enough about to be on time for.

As some have suggested, my gut tells me that A Levels might not have been the right way forward for him. He'll probably do better taking a course, getting a job, or starting an apprenticeship, but no matter what he chooses, he will have to wake up and be places on time, hence my original shout out for advice to see if someone had some creative ideas, perhaps from experience, that helped their own teen be more responsible in this way.

OP posts:

Frazzled2207 · 18/11/2021 21:58

Tbf op one of your previous posts did suggest that it was “simply” a case of getting him out of bed. Of course now it’s clear that it’s a lot more complicated than that but the responses weren’t surprising given the information given.

If you are waking him up and he gets up and still refuses to get himself out the door then I probably reluctantly agree that he needs to face the consequences. Whatever you do make sure he understands that he doesn’t have a totally free roof on his head indefinitely. Either he pulls his fingers out with some kind of education, or he gets a job.

My cousin was like this. He eventually sorted himself out and has a great career.

Chewbecca · 18/11/2021 22:14

In your OP, you said we don't wake him up because he's 18 and needs to learn responsibility and deal with real consequences,

That’s why posters think you haven’t woken him and it was not a wacky suggestion that you might try to help.

Leah2005 · 18/11/2021 22:19

Our lad got to just before Christmas on his third year and decided he didn't want to do it any more. His dad (we're divorced) had a chat with him and said that's fine, but you need to find a job and pay your mum £70 a week board. He did some shifts at the local Royal mail parcel depot and realised that was more difficult and the racist gits he was working with weren't his kind of people. Fortunately he hadn't given up college at that point and he slogged through to the end to get to uni. I think it just gave him a bit of breathing space when we all said well you don't have to do A levels you know but you do have to do something. I wonder if that might work for you - a bit of an amnesty?

JaffavsCookie · 18/11/2021 22:23

To be fair @iammumm it could have been this comment of yours in your opening post that lead us to think you weren’t waking him We want him to be responsible and we don't wake him up because he's 18 and needs to learn responsibility and deal with real consequences, so us doing the helicopter parenting thing to make sure he's at school on time isn't an option anymore - it's well overdue that he does it himself.

HunkyPunk · 18/11/2021 22:29

To those who have mentioned that perhaps we've already tried (and tried and tried and tried) the wacky idea of waking him up - thank you, your common sense is uncanny.

Why, thank you. I and others may have used our common sense to assume that we could take you at your word, as quoted below - obviously not.

We want him to be responsible and we don't wake him up because he's 18 and needs to learn responsibility and deal with real consequences,

Imworkingonit · 18/11/2021 23:17

DS was terrible for getting out of bed. I'd wake him on occasion but wasn't there all of the time and he also would get up and get dressed before laying down and falling asleep again and was generally unmotivated to go. He missed loads of college in the end but did just about scrape through his A levels.

The game changer re getting up was when we got him a Sonic Bomb alarm clock with bed shaker (Xmas gift). This would at least consistently wake him up (before he went back to sleep) so he was warned he needed to train himself to respond to his alarm as he wasn't being woken any more, even if I was there and already awake myself!

There were a couple of false starts but once he realised he really did need to take responsibility and was more motivated to do so (work) he sorted himself out within a matter of a few days and gets up ok now with just the occasional issue.